While visiting Arches National Park in Utah in 1994 with my wife and son, we hiked the short distance from the parking area to Double Arch. It was not the ideal time of day to shoot the arch. Double Arch is quite big and required using a 20mm lens. I also had to Figure 68. Double Arch, 1994:
This negative has good shadow detail, but the test print showed the highlights to be a little light.
Shot with Ilford 100 Delta rated at an EI of 50 and a B+W red-orange (#041) filter.
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point the camera up to get a composition I was pleased with. I used a B+W red-orange (#041) filter on the lens because the arch contained mostly shadow areas and the sky was quite bright behind it. The filter would help by lightening the reddish orange sandstone of the arch slightly, while darkening the sky. Although I didn’t record the expo-sure, I recall it was about f/5.6 at 1⁄125of a second. The film I used was Ilford 100 Delta rated at EI 50.
When we returned from the trip, I processed the film in my usual homemade devel-oper. The resulting negatives looked good. There was a fair amount of shadow detail, but a test print (fig. 68) showed the highlights to be a little dense on the negative (the high-lights were light on the test print).
I made several different prints with varying results. Trying to dodge and burn effectively was especially difficult because of the shape of the arch. Then I decided to make a print using the split-filter technique. Although not always a useful trick, this negative seemed par-ticularly well suited to the method.
The first exposure of the final print was made with a #11⁄2filter at an exposure of 30 seconds at f/11. Then I used a #41⁄2filter with a much lower exposure—6 seconds at f/11 (fig. 69).
The difference can be subtle, especially when printed in a book. Comparing the prints side by side in person, the differences are more noticeable, especially in the highlight areas.
Figure 69. Printed with the split-filter method, using a #11⁄2filter (exposure of 30 seconds at f/11), and a #41⁄2filter (exposure of 6 seconds at f/11).
C R E A T I V E B L A C K - A N D - W H I T E P H O T O G R A P H Y
It’s important to note that print-ing filters won’t replace shadow detail that isn’t in the negative. You need adequate film exposure if you hope to get shadow detail in the final print. With the right negative, split-filter printing can be effective.
Bleaches
Bleaches have a small but impor-tant place in the darkroom. While bleaches can be used on negatives, it’s unwise unless the negative is oth-erwise unusable and is considered expendable. Unexpected changes can leave you with no negative at all, rather than just a poor one.
Bleaches, however, can be especially effective in fine-tuning a print and that’s where I’ll limit my discussion. If you’re interested in trying bleaches on your negatives, there are many books with suggested formulas.
Usually, if you make a bad print, you simply make another with the necessary corrections. Bleaches are not used to correct a bad print, but rather to selectively improve a good print. If the overall print looks good, but the highlights need to be just a little brighter, then using a bleach can be beneficial.
The bleach formulas I’ve included were originally formulated to be used with negatives.
They can work with prints, either as a bath in a tray (which affects the entire print) or as a swabbed solution (which will affect only the areas to which it’s applied). I usually use cot-ton swabs to apply the solutions locally, rather than immersing the prints into a tray of solu-tion. Use whichever method is most appropriate for your prints. It may take a bit of experimenting to find what works best for you.
Bleaches are also known as reducers since they physically reduce the silver that forms a black-and-white image. This can be somewhat confusing because bleaches are not reducers in the chemical sense. Developers reduce silver halides to metallic silver, which is the opposite of what occurs in bleaching. Still, bleaches have long been referred to as negative or print reducers. Bleaching is sometimes called reduction for this reason.
Reducers can work in several ways. Bleaches were once commonly used to improve dense negatives, especially in the days before meters. Dense negatives can be the
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quence of overexposure, overdevel-oping, or a combination of the two.
As a result, various bleaches were formulated for these different cir-cumstances. These same bleaches can work with mixed success on prints. amounts of silver in shadow, mid-tone, and highlight areas. However, since there’s less density in the shadow area of a negative (or the highlight area of a print), that’s where the greatest percentage change takes place. The effect of subtractive reducers is to increase local contrast.
Proportional reducers remove density in proportion to the amount of silver present. Since they remove more silver from high-density areas (highlights on negatives, shadows on prints) than from low-density
portions, they reduce contrast. There are no truly proportional reducers, although there are formulas (mixtures of reducers) that produce the desired effect.
Superproportional reducers have an even greater effect on high-density areas, but almost none on low-density sections. They can be very effective for trying to bring out a little shadow detail in a print without destroying surrounding midtones or highlights. The results can be unpredictable compared with those of subtractive reducers. Consistency is not a hallmark of superproportional reducers.